Banishment

by Habu

13 Apr 2017 6273 readers Score 9.1 (113 votes) PDF Mobi ePub Txt


I was seated at the high table, but just barely. Newly minted Bishop McLeod--Andy to me in moments of privacy--was four seats to my right, at the center of the table. I couldn’t have achieved eye contact with him, if I’d wanted to. I wondered if Crandel, seated to the bishop’s right, the dean of the college, had arranged that seating that on purpose. Crandel was the organizer of Belmont Abby College here in Charlotte, North Carolina, as well as its eyes and ears. I wonder if he had divined the relationship I shared with the bishop and even now, when Andy had been elevated and changes were inevitable, was intervening.

I tried the words, “Bishop McLeod,” out again, silently, on my tongue, and the man next to me turned and smiled, saying, “I know. Such a privilege for the college to have provided a bishop.” I just smiled back wanly, not realizing I’d said it out loud, and pretended that I saw the honor in this elevation as well. The title “bishop” still seemed strange. It had been barely a month since his elevation, and this was his celebration banquet. We were sending him off to Charleston to ascend to the bishopric of the Charleston Diocese. Until then he had been Monsignor McLeod, president of Belmont Abby College, and I had been simply Father Blackwood, the lowest-ranked assistant professor of English at the school, in my first, trial year here.

Everyone was having such a jolly time at the banquet and my jaw was getting tired from the false smiles I had to set to pretend that everything was all right--better than all right. James Crandel had been named earlier today as the school’s new president. Everything was so “all right” about that that I thought I might be sick. I started to tell the head of the English department, sitting next to me, that I felt slightly ill and thought I’d take my leave early, but Dixon’s attention was completely devoted up table, where he was prepared to laugh at the joke that Crandel was making, no matter what the punch line was. The ranks were already falling into line behind the new president.

I slipped out of the banquet room, with no one noticing, I thought, until I looked back at high table and saw Crandel’s eyes on me. He was telling a joke and his mouth was set in a sly, I’m-so-clever smile, but the smile didn’t extend to his eyes. The joke was for the table, but I knew that the eyes were for me.

I went to my apartment at the top of one of the resident halls, using the back stairs so that none of the students would realize I had returned and took advantage of that to come to me with one of their petty concerns. As junior faculty, I was a resident counselor as well as an instructor. I stripped out of my black cassock--trying to draw my thoughts where they should be by thinking on the Savior as I released the thirty-three buttons, each button representing a year in Jesus’s life, although only being able to conjure up the image of the last time the buttons had been undone by someone other than me. I showered and lay down on the bed in the nude. The image of the kiss and having my cassock unbuttoned and of what came afterward when it was revealed I wore nothing underneath it caused my hand to move to my crotch, for me to moan, and for me to arch my back.

I had to think. I couldn’t stay here after Andy had gone. Crandel hated me--and suspected me, I was sure. In fact, he probably knew. There were other possibilities. But I was in orders and chained to the Charleston Diocese. Andy was walking into a position where he had complete control of my life and could reassign me at his will. Would he take me to Charleston with him? These last two weeks he’d been referring to the elevation to bishop as the opportunity of a new life, of dedicating himself even more closely to God’s work and a pure life.

“I will be the first black Bishop of Charleston,” he had said. “Can you have any idea what an opportunity that provides to be a leader for tomorrow, Matt?”

I could certainly see that the elevation had changed him--that he no longer was just Andy, to me, or even Monsignor McLeod, the president of the first college I was teaching at. He was a bishop, and not just any bishop. He was the bishop of the order I was married to. Our relationship inevitably was changed.

I heard the door to the back stairs landing open, and there he was, in his new trappings, the black cassock, with the red trim and red sash. I rose from the bed, erect and lightly panting, and walked to him. He had seen me leave the banquet hall after all. And he had left earlier than he needed to, as well, and had come to me. He was in the middle of the celebration of his elevation, but he had broken off from that and come to me.

We embraced and our lips met. I untied his red sash as we stood close together, clinging to each other, me trembling and he towering over me. His hand was on my shaft, stroking it, as I unbuttoned his cassock, flared it open, and went down on my knees to him. He lifted his hand, and I kissed his ring, ever the signal between us of my total submission to him.

He was erect even before I took him in my hand and stroked him as I kissed the crease where his lower belly transitioned into the top of his left thigh. He was a bull of a man, both in size and musculature, but also in equipment. He was a black bull, the first black bishop of the Charleston Diocese, his balls meaty and hanging low and his cock hard as steel, thick, long, proudly protruding. When I took it into my mouth and he lay his hands on the back of my head to guide me, I gagged in the unsuccessful attempt to take it all inside me.

I was able to take it all inside me later, though, as I lay on my belly on the bed, raised on my knees, my pelvis elevated a bit to him, and he covered me close from above, one hand grasping my wrist over my head, and the other arm encasing my heaving belly, holding me in his total control, as he fucked me in long, thick, deep strokes. No man dominated me as this black bull did. No man satisfied me as Andy could. I opened completely to him, becoming soft and vulnerable inside, in the core of me, totally trusting he would be good to me, when, if he lost control, or became cruel, he could rip me to shreds inside with the monstrous club between his thighs. But he took me slow and easy, giving me time to open as much as I could to him, moving slowly inside me, gently going deeper rather than thrusting, and coming in a prodigious, peaceful flow rather than as a conqueror in pain.

As he was standing beside the bed, me collapsed on the bed on my belly, an arm draped over the side, knuckles dragging on the carpet, and me watching him rebutton the thirty-three buttons of his cassock in a worshipful daze, he said, “Come to my office at 9:00 in the morning. We must discuss your future.”

The next morning, at 9:00, I was standing in front of the bishop’s desk, behind which he was sitting, toying with a feather pin in his hands and framed by photographs of him with the pope and joking with the Archbishop of Atlanta. Already he no longer was Andy to me, or Monsignor McLeod. He wasn’t the man who covered me close from above and possessed me deep with his monster cock as recently as the previous night. He was my bishop. He had told me where I was to go. There was no questioning his judgment or decision. But . . .

“Where is this Daufuskie Island? How many Catholics are there? You say I’ll be the only priest?”

“Some would think the island is remote--it’s off the South Carolina coast and is serviced by a ferry--but Hilton Head is just to the north of it and Savannah just to the south, so it is a restful place between activity,” the bishop answered. He was looking at the feather he was spinning between his fingers. He wasn’t looking up at me. “It doesn’t matter how many Catholics are there now. You are being sent to build the church up. The church is St. Mary’s. I understand it’s in a bit of disarray. You are interested in working with your hands. I’m sure you will find it just the challenge you need.”

Banishment was the word that went through my brain. He is sending me away to someplace so remote I’ll never be heard from again. This is what his new life entailed. I should have heeded the feeling that last night, the most intense of our couplings, had been a farewell fuck. But, that hadn’t proved to be the case.

“Yes, Reverend Father,” I said and turned to leave.

“Matthew,” I heard him mumble in a voice that sounded strange. I turned back. “Lock the door and come here, son,” he murmured.

He pulled his chair back from the desk, took my hand when I came to the side of the desk, and pulled me around, facing him, between him and the desk. “Kneel to me, son,” he whispered. I went down on my knees in front of him. He presented the ring on one of his hands, and I kissed it, as he unbuttoned his cassock with the other. He was naked underneath and in erection. I took his shaft in my mouth and he guided my head, making me take him to the root this time. He lifted me when he had engorged, unbuttoned and flared, my cassock. I stepped out of my briefs as he pulled them down my legs. It was my turn to moan and hold his head between my hands and luxuriate in his attentions as he took me in his mouth and gave suck.

“One last time,” he murmured as he pulled away from me and nudged me onto his lap, holding his cock erect with one hand, guiding me with the other hand on the small of my back, as I positioned myself on the cock head and descended on the shaft. He leaned forward, burying his head into my sternum and grasped and separated my buttocks with his hands as, using the leverage of my feet on the floor on either side of his thighs, I raised and lowered my passage on his steel hard, black bull cock. He sucked the aureole of one of my nipples into his mouth, in its entirety, and flicked the nipple with his tongue as he sucked it. I moaned for that and then again when he did the same with the other nipple.

I tried to show him I no longer was as open to him as before--as I had been the previous night when I’d gone soft and spongy for him and opened for him to go deeper into the vulnerability of me than he’d ever sunk before--but my own needs defeated me. My passage opened right up for the thickness of him as he went deeper with each downward pull, controlled by the bishop now with hands gripping my hips.

My passage muscles rippled over the throbbing cock, blossoming open, stretching for him, coaxing him deeper and deeper inside me. I started to cry out in ecstasy, but sensing that, he gripped my face with a large, brown paw, forcing a thumb inside my mouth, which I sucked on as I rose and fell on the cock with muted sounds of groans and moans.

He turned me around on the cock, lowering my chest to the surface of the desk. My arms shot above my head, scattering framed photographs aside. I gripped the edge of the far side of the desk, as he crouched over me from behind, one hand grasping my mouth, the other hand gripping my waist. There was no peaceful end to this now. He was pounding my ass, deep and hard, fucking me with a fury as he’d never done before. I was gasping and groaning and moaning under his control, being fucked hard as he’d never done before. Being taken higher and higher. Gasping for breath, every ounce of my attention going to that huge cock battering at me deep inside, finding that I could take it. I could be soft deep inside again and still take his relentless pounding. Discovering that this was what I wanted from him, albeit having learned that too late.

We achieved a near-simultaneous ejaculation, the first time we’d managed it. The last time we’d try, we both knew.

We didn’t look at each other or say anything while we stood half an office away from each other and rebuttoned and adjusted our cassocks. He wouldn’t look at me directly as he restored his treasured photographs on his desk to their original positions--supplanting me with them for the ultimate time. Sometime in the next week they would be packed up and sent to Charleston. Sometime in the next week, I’d be packed out and sent to a remote island off the coast.

It was over and we both knew it. We also both knew that no matter how much closer to divinity McLeod’s elevations would take him, he wasn’t going to fundamentally change. Neither would I. We’d both try, but I wouldn’t fool myself that it would work. I’m not sure he could fool himself either, but I wasn’t going to be the one he discovered that with now. He might fool himself now, but his needs were insatiable. There would be some other young priest to be known biblically and used by him in the near future.

As I left the office, I encountered Crandel in the reception office, waiting to go in for his turn at submission to the bishop in an entirely different way. He smirked at me, no doubt knowing where my next parish assignment was. He’d probably even been the one to come up with the location. I was too sad to say to him all that I felt in my heart and so would have loved to say, but I would leave it to someone else to take that smirk off his face. I was too heartsick to take on that assignment.

* * * *

“Don’t you find it a little too hot to be wearing a choke collar like that?”

I would have laughed if I hadn’t been so hot from wearing this choking clerical collar when I stepped off the ferry at Daufuskie Island and into . . . what exactly? I had expected a town of some sort, not just a small collection of time-worn buildings on the wooded land running up from the public dock. There was a small marina next to the dock, but this looked more like a private home compound than the center of island life. It wasn’t just the collar that chaffed; I was in a shirt and trousers rather than a cassock, but they were black. Black most certainly wasn’t a color to be wearing on the South Carolina coast on a summer’s day.

“It’s a clerical collar. It identifies me as a priest,” I answered. “You wouldn’t be Frank Chisolm, would you, or know where I can find him?”

“Yes, that’s me. Frank. You must be Mr. . . . Father Blackwood. The minister of my church wears a T-shirt and shorts in this weather. I figure you could do the same.”

“Your minister? So you aren’t Catholic?”

“We don’t have any Catholics on the island, as far as I know--well, until you arrived just now--unless it be some those fancy people in the enclaves along the coast, who don’t come further onto the island--just boat themselves over to Hilton Head or Savannah as they wish. Don’t know what religion any of them are; we don’t mix with them. This is a Gullah island and we’re all Baptists here. Freewill Baptists back to the time when we were slaves.”

“Well, you do have a Catholic now. A Catholic priest. And this, apparently, is Saint Mary’s parish of the Charleston Diocese.”

“Yes, I was told that when I was hired to meet you and help you get set up. That was news around here, I’ve gotta say. We had a good laugh at that. All this time we’ve been a Catholic parish, and we didn’t know it. You could have seen me almost bend over laughing when I found out that the building our women had been using as a bingo hall is actually a Catholic church owned by the church. The ladies have been good about moving out, though. They even helped dig out the brush around it so you can get to it more easily. You’ve got a good line of credit to put the building to rights--and the house that goes with it.”

That was the one good thing Andy had done for me. He’d set up a generous line of credit. I’d been told I’d need it too. And he’d had someone hired to help me get established here. I don’t know if he realized that the man who was hired, this Frank Chisolm, was a hunk and a half. He was black, but of a mix with white. On him the mix looked good. He wasn’t any older than I was, from the look of him, and muscular, but not overly developed. He was lanky and walked with grace. His hair was black and straight and came down to his shoulders when he didn’t have it pulled back in a ponytail to keep it out of the way and him cooler, which he often did when he was working.

His smile was languid, sexy, his amusement contagious. The first thing he’d said to me coming off the ferry had been criticism of my dress--but he had said it in such a way that it hadn’t offended me a bit. It also had signaled to me that saying the Catholic community here was inactive would be a gross understatement. My parish may not have anyone to serve but me. Of course, my sins were so numerous and deep, that I might be as much as the Lord could handle on this island.

I was surprised that our conversation was so easy as we walked up into the small group of buildings at the public dock, one of which was a combined grocery store and pharmacy, not much more than a convenience store and the other a larger souvenir shop. Frank told me that tourists coming over from Hilton Head provided most of the money that came into the island. Beyond that it was mostly subsistence farming among the Gullah community, the ancestors of the freed blacks from the Civil War who had remained in scattered communities across the Carolina coasts. The culture was no stronger anywhere than right here on Daufuskie Island, which had remained remote.

I could tell from Frank’s drawl and the loose, but manly way he walked--more of a saunter--that the lifestyle of the island was laid back and slow moving. It also was easy going. It was clear from his response--the response of a Baptist, whose sect pretty much dominated the island--to a Catholic priest that he was accepting and unshockable. I wondered if he’d be shocked to know that I’d been sent here to hide away the sexual sin of a bishop. Well, to be fair, it was my sin too, and making the best of being banished to the edge of civilization here was a penance that I had decided to accept as no more than what I deserved to serve. I would be as celibate from henceforth, I had declared to myself, as the bishop no doubt believed--falsely--that he would be.

Still, that was hard to resolve as I followed the young Gullah half breed up the rise to the community buildings and watched the roll of his steel-like buns under the loose material of his shorts. He was wearing white cargo shorts and a very loose T-shirt. On his feet were skimpy rope sandals covering strong-looking feet with long, plump toes. He exuded sex, and, although I knew what he was wearing must have been cheap, I was equally sure that he could have been photographed for a yacht ad in a glossy magazine and been a sensation of style, grace, and sensuality.

“What are these?” I asked as we approached the souvenir shop building.

“Golf carts--or modified ones,” Frank answered. “There are no cars on the island. We move in these. You’ll want to buy one for your church and your own use. I could help you locate a used on in good condition. It isn’t far from anywhere to anywhere on Daufuskie Island or any hurry to get there, so much of the transport is by foot. But transfers from elsewhere like you and the day tourists need these carts. And your luggage requires the use of one, of course.”

It was only now that he seemed to notice that I was lugging two heavy suitcases. He hadn’t offered to carry one or both for me. I actually had found that satisfying--that he didn’t give me the impression of being subservient. In fact, if I were to guess, I would take him as a dominant--which was quite all right with me. Not that I assumed he was attracted to men, of course.

The cart ride wasn’t long. The road--more like a narrow, shell-paved drive--entering the island from the public dock area was called Haig Point Road. Taking this for about a half mile to the Melrose Plantation area on the central-east shore of the island, one of eleven original plantations that covered the island at the time of the Civil War, we came to an intersection with the Avenue of the Oaks, which led into Melrose. Saint Mary’s Church and rectory were located on the Avenue of the Oaks near this intersection. The landscape was almost all scrub, with scrawny pine trees. The few building in sight were weather-beaten and in an advanced stage of melting back into the scrub.

I stood, almost in disbelief, and looked at the two run-down buildings, both of weathered wood that once had been white, but no more. Both were small. The church appeared to be leaning, although Frank assured me that that was an optical illusion caused by the lack of balance of the foliage engulfing it. It hit me how hard this penance was going to be to fulfill.

Standing at my side and looking at the same buildings I was, Frank said, “You’re lucky. The buildings are in better condition than most that the Gullah live in on the island. The walled vacation estates of the millionaires along the island’s coast, are, of course, a stark contrast to these. But if you want any of the Gullah to be attending your church, I suggest you do little more than repair the window and door frames and put on a coat of paint. We are one with the earth here. We aren’t much for putting on airs.”

Somehow, this bucked me up--and even more so when he added, “Tom and I will be here tomorrow to start helping you with the repairs.”

I wasn’t going to have to do this alone. He added, though, “Which should we start with first? The church building or the house you will live in?”

“The church, I think,” I piously said. “God’s work first.”

He laughed. “Maybe you shouldn’t answer that until you’ve seen the inside of the house.”

He was right. We started with the house first. Somehow it didn’t matter that much. It was just a joy to have him there, working with me--in fact, doing most of the work. I could not have done it without him. I would not want to try.

The downside is that, although my determination to remain celibate in fact remained intact, any determination I might have had of not fantasizing in the moments of lying on my bed at night and drifting off to sleep of a man like Frank covering and moving inside me did not hold.

* * * *

The black shirt and trousers and clerical collar lasted all of two days. I found that Frank had dressed up to meet me at the ferry and wore even less than that when he was working on the church buildings. When he appeared for work Monday afternoon, after saying he’d be there bright and early on Monday, he was wearing gym shorts that dipped to show a curl of black pubic hair in front and the crease of the curve of his lower, flat belly into his upper thighs, as well as the start of a separation of the buttocks in back. He was wearing the rope sandals as well, though. Anyone thinking of calling him Droopy Drawers would be arrested by the reality of how sexy he looked that way. Tom, a younger and smaller man, fully Gullah, who accompanied him, was similarly attired, except his cotton trousers were longer. But men were well-worked muscular, and both worked hard, but in sporadic spurts.

I was to learn, from brief conversations with the two, that they both picked up work as they could, that this was the way of the Gullah of Daufuskie Island, and that it carried them through. Most of their subsistence--the subsistence of most here--came off the working of the land, which was taken care of mostly by the Gullah women and that was close to communal in both effort and sharing. It apparently worked for them. I didn’t meet a single Gullah on the island who wasn’t smiling and moving at his or her own languid pace. In addition to the stipend Frank now had and shared with Tom to work on Saint Mary’s church and my house and to help me get established here, he was a backup golf cart tour guide of the island for tourists coming over by ferry from Hilton Head for a brief visit to the island, and he ran a fishing boat out of the marina by the public dock. I gathered that he lived in the fishing boat as well.

By day two, I was in a T-shirt, shorts, and sneakers, with socks, and by day four, only the shorts and sneakers, without socks. I was growing brown as a berry from working on the outside of the buildings while Frank and Tom mostly worked on the insides, miraculously bringing the standards of the house to almost civilized and the interior of the church, with four pews recovered, that being more than enough, back to order and cleanliness. I also was hardening up. I’d been in good shape before, but now I was getting toned. Frank remarked on this, which embarrassed, but also pleased, me.

The two men worked a sporadic schedule, not showing up when there were other odd jobs to be had or when Frank heard that fish were running down off the mouth of the Savannah River. Even when they were on the job, they took long breaks whenever they took the notion, often leaning against trees and smoking despite my “friendly” lectures on the dangers of cigarettes. I was piqued at first at their half-hearted approach to work, even though when they were working they were productive and efficient, but Frank would just smile at me and say that there wasn’t anything that had to be done today that couldn’t be done just as well tomorrow, and I slowly fell into the rhythm of the island.

Sometimes the two disappeared for a half hour or more on one of their frequent breaks. They were working with me for only a week before I found out where they went and how they took their breaks. It also provided an answer to my wondering what Frank’s living arrangements were. The Gullah seemed to be one large family, even though they lived in scattered family units around the island. More often than not they congregated to eat and party and, in one of their major revenue projects, work together in weaving intricately designed sweetgrass baskets that sold for big bucks in the Charleston and Savannah markets. They worked the fields together communally and one afternoon when I took a long walk, I discovered that the men were casual about covering the women in the fields and that the women could be casual about letting more than one man cover her.

I wondered if Frank, an unusually handsome and well-formed man, satisfied his needs by casually covering Gullah women in the fields. He may, as far as I knew, do that, but one afternoon when I went looking for him and Tom when one of their breaks dragged on and I needed advice on how to replace a board on the side of my cottage, I found out at least one way that Frank satisfied his sexual needs.

Both men were naked, both of them had beautiful bodies, the beauty of which was enhanced in how they were working together as one unit. Ebony-skinned Tom was bowed over, feet and hands buried in the ferns under a creeping-rooted Cypress tree next to a bog, his tail held high. Taller, milk-chocolate-skinned Frank was plastered to his back, draped over him. Frank’s feet were planted beside and outside of Tom’s feet, and his fists were gripping Tom’s wrists. His chest was pressed into Tom’s shoulder blades, his face into the hollow of Tom’s throat. He was fucking Tom’s ass in long, slow slides. Tom’s eyes were set in a glassy stare, showing the pain-pleasure of what I could see was a long, thick, jet-black cock working his passage. His mouth was slack open in an expression of sheer pleasure and submission.

I watched for a moment, lost in the beauty of the tableau--what I’d been determined, when I came here, to understand as a sin that I was to shake in my own life and that I was enduring penance here for having indulged. The natural, primeval way these two men were engaged in it, though, and in a simple, honest setting such as this challenged both the ideology-based prejudices I was attempting to acquire to be right with my church and my resolve. I was particularly mesmerized by seeing that, although of light-chocolate skin tone from his mixed heritage, Frank’s hung cock was jet black.

I couldn’t help but shudder in arousing pleasure as I watched the huge shaft move in and out of Tom’s hole.

Thoughts of sex with men--sex with Andrew McLeod--that I had been trying to suppress for weeks came flooding in and I turned and stumbled back to and into the cottage. There had been so much I had wanted to write about--to put into a novel--in thinking of these past several weeks. I hadn’t been able to do so, as the electricity to the two buildings hadn’t been connected until the previous day, and, more important, I was trying to convince myself that it was a sin to write about my feelings let alone think on them.

When Frank and Tom returned to work, Frank stuck his head into the front door of the cottage, finding me pounding away on my computer on the desk.

“There you are,” he said, “You asked me a question about replacing a board in the siding before I went off on break. Would you like to come out here and show me where--”

“It can wait,” I answered. “There’s nothing that has to be done today that can’t just as well be done tomorrow.” And I turned, blushing, from looking at him, as I now couldn’t see him without imagining him naked with that big jet-black cock hanging down between his legs.

The buildings quickly became usable--they’d never be full presentable--and I moved forward to holding my first mass, digging around and finding my black cassock, which, when nothing was worn under it, proved cooler than the collared black shirt and black trousers I’d brought to wear on the island.

My first mass was attended by two squirrels, a cat, and, outside the door, a bleating goat. There were three Gullahs, an old crone in addition to Frank and Tom, at the second mass. A half dozen showed up to the third one, attending, Frank assured me, out of curiosity and flexibility. They would attend their regular three-hour-long services at the Baptist church that afternoon. They were interested in what Catholics did in their services. Thereafter I put on a real show of full-blown formal ritual, and they loved it, filling the church. It wasn’t too hopeful, but it was a start--and I was fulfilling my end of the bargain with the church.

At least I was fulfilling my duties in that regard. I also increasingly was lusting after Frank, dreaming of him lying between my thighs, mining me deep with that jet-black cock of his. With Andy, and now Frank, I obviously had an obsession with black bull cock. I tried working off my frustrations by banging away on my computer on a novel draft. That helped, but it only served to hold me in check, not to decrease my desire or sexual frustration.

I took to taking long walks in the evening and, on more than one occasion, I passed gatherings in one clearing or the other where a few of the Gullah shacks were gathered of a festival party going on, with communal basket weaving moving into picnicking off a common table, music on primitive instruments, dancing, and raucous laughter. More than once someone from the group would wave me to come join them, and the smiles turned on me assured me I would be welcome, but I had nothing to share, so I would politely demure and continue with my walks.

I noticed that they wore clothes of colorful cotton for these festivities and I ordered a few bolts of material from Savannah, figuring I’d find some occasion of giving them in the community to symbolize my wish to fit in here. The opportunity presented itself when I asked Frank about the parties one evening.

“You should attend them. You’d be welcome,” Frank said. “It would help you become part of the community. Many of the Gullah have told me that they enjoy the entertainment you put on at your church. They would be happy to include you in their celebrations. We celebrate life here. Often when we weave the baskets together we celebrate the beauty of them--and of what we’ve been given here--and the friendship of each other in our gatherings.”

I couldn’t think of anything better that I could be preaching to these people than they already had--and that I was aching to have as well.

“Until now, I’ve had nothing to contribute,” I said. “But I’ve ordered this material from Savannah and I know they like to dress in colorful clothes for their festivities. Do you think--?”

“That you’ve taken an interest in the people of the island--that you aren’t just vacationing in a walled compound at the water’s edge and raising huge piles of rocks to live in--is enough for the Gullah here. We accept all kinds, and we do not judge. I know you have talked of being banished here for some sin or other, but we don’t judge here.”

“I am a priest, Frank, and I’ve taken a vow of celibacy. I am here to do penance for that, which includes not falling into the pit again. I haven’t just sinned against the vow of celibacy, but I’ve done it with a man.” I don’t know how that escaped me, but it had been bottled up inside me too long. Well, that was a lie. I knew why I did it. I’d seen him fucking a man. As much as it scared me, I wanted him to know I was a man who had let a man fuck me. I wanted him to know that we were closer connected that he thought. I couldn’t look at him, but when he spoke, I could clearly hear him.

“This is a world of our own on the island, Matt,” he said--using my Christian name for the first time and laying his fingers gently on my forearm. “We banish the guilt of sin from here. You can be what you want here, and you can be a priest to the people here. They have room in their hearts and lives for all manner of spiritual nurture and lifestyle. If you have sinned with being with a man for sex, you are no worse than I am. I have been with a man for sex too.”

“Yes, I’ve seen you,” I murmured. I couldn’t look at him to see how this registered.

“I know where there will be a gathering tonight,” he said after a moment of silence. “I will come for you in a cart at 8:00 p.m. Will you go to the party with me?”

“And afterward?” I asked, not being able to help myself. I was open and vulnerable to him, as good as lying down in front of him and open my legs for him. I did lift my eyes to his now, but I couldn’t gauge his reaction. He must have known that I was offering myself to him--begging him to take me.

He merely repeated, “Will you go to the party with me?”

“Yes,” I said, still not being able to look at him.

He turned to walk away and then turned back and said, “You’ve been honest with me about the nature of this sin you say you are fighting. I’ll be as honest with you. I was told of your desires and needs. And I was told I was hired because I lay men and that I was to make sure you were happy and satisfied--if you wanted to be. When and if you wish it, I will be pleased to lay you too. We aren’t much about being coy on the island. If I didn’t want to lay you I wouldn’t tell you this. Since I do, I see no reason not to be open about it. I understand if being a priest means something to you in a man being with a man, but it doesn’t mean anything to me. Sorry, but I just see you as a man I’d like to fuck. Now, I guess I should ask again with all my cards on the table. Do you want to go to the party with me? It doesn’t mean that we ever have to get it on, depending on what you want. But if you want me to fuck you after the party, I will.”

And then he, as I blushed and stammered that, yes, I still wanted to go to the party, turned and left.

I also said, “and lay me afterward,” but by then he was gone.

The party was a delight, everything I could have hoped for it to be. From the time we arrived and a group of women took me in hand to laugh at my crude attempts to weave sweetgrass into a basket and Frank went off with the men cooking sausages on a grill and smoking their cigarettes, I was welcomed with smiles and friendly conversation.

I sat with the group, cross-legged on the ground through a shared meal, and listened to the harmonica and strange string-instrument music. I even participated in the dancing, in which there were no partners, just everyone moving about in a circle under strings of colored lights. And when the home-brewed booze was passed around, I imbibed in that--fully.

Perhaps too fully. All inhibitions flowed away from me. I became one with the Gullah of Daufuskie Island.

* * * *

I woke to a rocking sensation and staring into Frank’s eyes, which were open and watching me. We were in the cramped cabin of his fishing boat, lying stretched out against each other, both naked. He had shown me his fishing boat before and I’d been in this cabin. I’d seen where he slept, and I had dreamed. It was like I was in a dream now--except that I wasn’t. I was lying on my back, one of his arms under me and the other laying across my chest. My legs were spread and bent, the soles of my feet flat on the mattress. I could feel his erection laying on my thigh. I was open and feeling the sensation of rippling inside my passage. I had been fucked--I certainly knew the feeling of having been fucked. In fact, my rim, gaping open from the feel of it, was still puckering and releasing. I’d been fucked within the last several minutes. My passage was sore. I hadn’t just been fucked; I’d been reamed.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “It was the booze. I never would have taken the liberty otherwise. I know I said I wanted to fuck you, but I said I’d wait for you to say you wanted it. I’m afraid I might not have waited. The booze did it for both of us--erased the inhibitions. I’m sorry. If it’s not what you wanted or were ready for, I’ll never--?”

“You’ve fucked me?” I asked, putting a mock edge on my voice.

“Oh, yes, I fucked you. More than once, I’m pretty sure. I’m still hard from the last time. Again I’m--”

“Shhh,” I whispered, raising a finger to his lips. “I did tell you last night I wanted it; you just weren’t still there when I said it. I’m just sorry I wasn’t conscious for it. I wish--”

“You want--?”

“Yes, please,” I whispered.

He rolled on top of me, between my open thighs. I arched my back, gave a little cry, and dug my fingernails into his shoulder blades, as he slowly, relentlessly entered me with that big, jet-black cock of his. He been there before--often enough that I had been reamed to accept him. The muscles of my passage walls responded as in joy, clutching at the throbbing cock as it moved deeper inside me, rippling over the steel-hard shaft, pulling it inside me. His lips found mine as he started to stroke me in long, hard, deep, slow, possessing slides. My pelvis went into motion of its own volition and we were going with the lapping of the waves under the boat, joined in the coordinated rhythm of the deep fuck. Fifteen minutes later he came--again--in a peaceful flow deep inside me and a harmonious shared sigh--his a deep baritone, mine a low tenor. I had already given up my seed up his flat belly, moments before.

I drifted off to a light sleep. When I opened my eyes, he was watching me with his eyes again--but from across the cabin, where he was perched on a cabinet, smoking a cigarette, and looking pensive. My eyes went to his crotch, mesmerized again by that big jet-black cock, half hard now, protruding from a thatch of curly black pubic hair and standing out in stark contrast to the milk chocolate tone of the rest of his body. His free hand went down to stroking his cock and I took mine in hand as well. We stroked ourselves hard, me lying there on his bunk and him just a few feet away, crouched on a cabinet. We said nothing, letting our eyes, electric with arousal, say it all.

He turned and flicked his still-smoldering cigarette into a small sink in the cabinet and, with an animalistic grunt, covered the space between us in two strides. He turned me on my belly and whipped an arm around my midsection, bringing me up on my knees, with my chest flat on the mattress, in one swift movement of covering me. I cried out as he thrust hard and deep inside me. His fists went to my wrists over my head, trapping them. He buried his face in the hollow of my neck and I felt his teeth latching onto me, painfully, there. I groaned and moaned and whimpered as, breathing heavily, he took me hard, vigorously, almost cruelly, showing no mercy, giving no quarter.

We fucked like dogs in heat, him pounding my ass, me crying out my need and my want and churning my pelvis against his onslaught, wanting him to take me fully and totally, which he did. I was as wanton as he was, as much in high heat as he was, fucking him as hard as he was fucking me. Both of us animals in full rut. We both ejaculated joyously and prodigiously and he lay on top of me, collapsed to the mattress now, and chewed lightly on my ear lobe and played inside my ear with his tongue.

He was young and virile. It wasn’t long--we were still calming our breathing--when he was hard again. He turned us, he on his back on the mattress and me on my back on top of him. He wrapped his arms under my armpits and forced my arms up in a captive full Nelson position. I raised my pelvis, placing my feet on the mattress on either side of his thighs to elevate me and give me leverage, positioned his cock head at my hole, descended on the cock, and raised and lowered my passage on his cock in a smooth, slow slide that eventually resulted in a long sigh from each of us and him releasing his seed inside me again.

Once again I drifted off into an exhausted sleep. When I woke, I was alone in the cabin.

I returned to my little church on the Avenue of Oaks, working on the buildings by myself for two days and holding a mass on Sunday that neither Frank nor Tom attended. Monday morning I drove my cart down to the public docks. Frank’s boat was gone.

That afternoon Tom showed up by himself, to work.

“Where’s Frank?” I asked.

“He’s taken his boat to Savannah,” Tom answered. He wasn’t looking me in the eye.

“When will he be back?”

“I’m not sure he’s coming back,” Tom answered. Was there a mild rebuff in the tone of his answer I wondered--or was it just me, worrying that Frank had felt guilty about causing me to forsake my vows, and understanding how important vows were--or should be--to a Catholic priest?

* * * *

I heard a familiar voice coming from the dock as I was sitting in the cabin of Frank’s boat, tapping away on the draft of my novel. I rose and moved to the hatch leading up on deck where Frank was, washing down the boat, but I didn’t go topside.

“Father Blackwood, you say?” I heard Frank respond to the question Crandel was asking. “No I don’t think we have a priest here on the island. Everyone I know on Daufuskie Island is Baptist. Most of us are Gullah and have been here since before the Civil War.”

“I’ve been to Saint Mary’s church. That’s where the priest was supposed to be. The place is a wreck,” Crandel said.

I wanted cry out in objection, “You should have seen it when I first saw it,” but I didn’t want him to know I was here.

“Do tell,” Frank said, his voice a study in innocence. “The unhappy truth is that island is hard on man-made structures,” he said. “If there once was a Catholic church here, it’s probably long past returning to the soil. I hear tell them Catholics are sticklers about sin, and we sin pretty regular here on Daufuskie. Fact is, visitors tend to get bitten by the sin bug as soon as they step foot on the island. Best not linger here if you don’t want to be bit by the sin bug.”

Crandel, sounding a bit snippy, said, “A mutual friend of ours asked that I check on him. He hasn’t heard from Father Blackwood for some time. He’s a bishop and is particularly worried about his friend.”

Andy--the Bishop of Charleston--having pangs of guilt and wanting to know why I hadn’t answered his letters, I thought. And he sent James Crandel, possibly the only other person who knew about us. Still protecting himself.

“As I said, I wouldn’t know about that. Don’t know about there being an active priest on the island,” Frank answered, his tone friendly and only half interested. “Sorry I couldn’t have helped more. Maybe Daufuskie life was found as not being for a Catholic priest. Maybe your friend went somewhere else or changed into someone else. Maybe he doesn’t want to be found. But there, that’s the ‘last call’ sound for the ferry. Your last chance to get back to Hilton Head today--unless you want to spend the night on the island.”

Fat chance of that, I thought. And then I thanked Frank again for covering for me--for covering me like he did--for believing me when I tracked him down in Savannah and declared that I wanted life with him and the lifestyle of Daufuskie Island and the Gullah more than I wanted or needed the Catholic Church.

I turned and went back to my computer, resuming the writing of my novel draft. It would be somewhat of a clearing of my soul and a revelation of the state of some matters inside the church. I had already decided to title it “The Bishop’s Lover.”

Frank came into the cabin, his gym shorts hanging low on his slim hips. “You heard?” he asked.

“Yes, I heard,” I answered, drawing him over to between me and the computer, facing me.

“Do you have regrets? I can call him back.”

“Not a single one other than how long it took me to accept my nature,” I said, pushing the shorts down off his hips, pulling him to me, opening my mouth over his jet-black dick, and starting to suck him off.

by Habu

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Copyright 2024